


Remake thyself (and the world will stay the same)

by The_Readers_Muse



Category: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith
Genre: AU on the ending because I said so that's why, Angst, Blood, Blood Drinking, Canonical Character Death, Character Turned Into Vampire, Depression, Established Relationship, Loss, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period Typical Language, Vampire Turning, Vampires, deals with loss of a loved one/friend/lover, very mild sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:10:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4786805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Readers_Muse/pseuds/The_Readers_Muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was ironic, he decided later. The truth of it. The penny paperbacks that rambled endlessly about the romanticism of the vampire bite. Their glossy covers painted macabre and deliciously intriguing, showing the exquisite agony of the fatal prostration. Of women – all luscious and beautiful - of course - sprawled in their murder's arms. Bare skin creamed and perfect, pining to be taken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the movie or book rights to "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
> 
> Authors Note #1: I hated how unresolved Speed's death was in the movie. Like he got bit and the train exploded and, yeah, I couldn't let it go. – This fic is told in Joshua Speed's point of view, but includes an entry at the beginning written by Abraham (in his journal) after Speed's death on the train.
> 
> Warnings: *Contains: angst, very mild sexual content, vampires, vampire turning, blood, adult language, adult content, deals with aspects of: depression, loss, loss of a loved one/friend/lover/established relationship, period appropriate language and attitudes.

_April, 14_ _th_ _, 1863_

_Today, the light in my life has guttered itself. For while I believe the war against the South and the forces of evil that supported it well and truly won, I know my heart has been dealt a blow for which there is no cure. Even now, I scarcely believe I can breathe without you. Speed, my dearest friend, forgive me for what my life had wrought upon yours. For you died in the service of not simply this country, but for goodness itself. Without you, the darkness could not have been held back. But forgive me more that even now I cannot make myself wish different. If I were a better man I would pray we'd never met. But I am not, and surely damned for it. For I cannot imagine a life on this earth where I had not met you. Our time together cost you your life. And still I am selfish. I knew you in every way. Man to man, employer to employee, friend to friend, one lover to another and it will take my own ending to strip that from me, if that is indeed what happens to a man when his death comes calling. Somehow I think it the opposite, I believe that we carry on who we are into the next life. So, if that is true, perhaps you are looking down on me even now. Smiling, heralding the small little curl that always started on the right of your face before reaching your eyes – the same one I became so intimately acquainted with over the years._

_We searched for days through the wreckage. William had to be carried away for food and rest. But none would go near me. Perhaps it was my expression? An innate warning all beings can recognize – the rue of suffering, loss. I know not. But the fire must have taken you. Henry would not speak on the subject. I believe he felt ashamed of thinking you capable of deceit. Our ruse worked so well it fooled the most wily of our friends. I only hope he doesn't take it to heart. I told him you would not think badly on him believing the lie over the truth, regardless of how short that duration was._

_When we first met that day in Springfield, you told me 'a friend in need is a friend of Speed.' Never I feel has that statement been more true. For I do need. Just as I did at the store, your friendship and guidance, your love, laugher and, of course, your wit. I miss-_

_I can speak no more of this. The hour is late and I am smudging ash and filth across the page even now. Yet the thought of farewell is incorrigible to me. Instead, allow me this. Even when we were apart we always ended our correspondence with 'forever yours.' So I will end this entry the same way and put my faith in God that we will meet again._

_Forever yours,_

_Abraham._

* * *

 It was ironic, he decided later.  _The truth of it_. The penny paperbacks that rambled endlessly about the romanticism of the vampire bite. Their glossy covers painted macabre and deliciously intriguing, showing the exquisite agony of the fatal prostration. Of women – all luscious and beautiful - of course - sprawled in their murder's arms. Bare skin creamed and perfect, pining to be taken.

It was complete tosh, the lot of it.

Because when Adam's fangs sliced – vicious and growling into his skin - he knew nothing but hell itself. A poisonous lancing burn that shattered through him, synonymous with every word that had ever been birthed to describe infinite suffering.

For a long, endless moment nothing else existed. Nothing beyond the pain and the fangs worrying into butter-soft skin, slicking his own blood down the curl of his neck and across his chest. Then-  _Abraham._ Their eyes met through the smoke and the ruined metal of the train-car roof. But there were no words. At least none that he could hear over the ringing in his ears. The man's mouth was open, expression pain-struck and twisted. Agonized, as if he was somehow in his place.

He took a small measure of comfort from that. Pain, like every other emotion they'd experienced together over the years had always been transmutable between them.  _Shared._  To know that in spite of everything, that had not changed, gave him courage. Strength enough to suck in a feeble gasp when Adam let him drop, crumpling to the floor as he streaked away, faster than his fading eyes could follow.

The battle raged on.

Supernatural versus the natural.

Just as it always would.

Only this time, Abraham and William were on their own.

His hand reached out, stretching in front of him as he tried to will dying muscles to grasp at the edge of one of the boxes and haul himself up. His nails grated across the grainy wood – ineffective and mewling-weak – before he slumped into himself. Pressing his hand against his neck as his lifeblood trickled between his fingers.

But it was all a ruse. A stop-gap measure. Victory or defeat, he was lost regardless. His only salvation - that singular pin-prick of brightness still available to him - was that it would be quick. Either the bite would have him or the train would take him down with it.

It had too.

For the alternative was altogether too much to bear.

* * *

 Only it didn't.

And even the train failed him.

* * *

 Henry found him before sunrise, turned and animal in the wreckage. Pinned down by iron beams and twisted girders that his injuries and fledgling strength could not budge. It had taken the elder vampire's fangs, bared and growling inches from the throbbing bite of their sire to bring a measure of control back to him. To wrench back the madness, the anger, the blood-lust, if only for a moment, as he clung to Henry fiercely.

He recalled the strangest things of that early time. Snatches of a hundred different memories and impressions. The feeling of broken bones slowly snapping whole. The fading echo of his own blood lining his parched throat. The taste of Henry's relief and sorrow tainting the air like a twinned emotion when he'd appeared in his line of sight. The whisper of his name that aired out into the lightening sky. Baring his teeth in response to the snarling growl he'd let go of without thought.

But most of all, he remembered the smell of him.  _Of Abraham._ Alive, salt-streaked and care-worn across Henry's skin as he leaned into the vampire's embrace and breathed it in with shaky pulls of air. Greedily cementing the scent of his dear friend in mind as well as body. Making him firmly his anchor, not only in his past life, but this new one as well.

It damned him, but the first taste of blood on his tongue was  _nirvana_. Like the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden itself, it was nourishing and sweet and he quickly found himself lost to it. Guzzling greedily as Henry crooned praise from the wings. Keeping watch as the man they'd cornered – a murderer for hire with blood still drying on his hands – twitched under his hold.

And when he raised his head, he looked up with new eyes. Tongue chasing the cooling drops of red as he met Henry's through the darkness. Finding an animal sort of joy in it when he flung back his head and let his prey crumple at his feet. Hissing as strength and purpose flowed through him once again.

They didn't have to speak.

There was no need for it.

He understood now.

_He knew._

That was what Adam's bite had taken away.  _Life._  The very essence of it. It was only in taking it from others – those less deserving, of course - that they could live again.

At the time he rather thought Henry found a measure of solace in the fact that he would now go through life with a true friend close at hand. Someone who would not wither with the ages but rather flourish alongside him as the world turned and humanity pushed its limits ever higher.

Pity was, he hadn't exactly been of like mind at the time.

* * *

 Abraham wasn't to know.

On that he'd insisted.

He didn't want to take the memory of a clean death away from him. Feeling it kinder to allow the man to believe in his purity of heart – or at least find a sort of repose in the quickness of it. In a way, that part was the easiest. Allowing the world to think he'd died on that train or even the battlefield – as he later learned his death had been reported. It was the part that came after that was the hardest.

The lie was kinder than the truth.

Even for his dear Abraham.

By the time he'd marshalled himself – honing his ungodly skills and achieving a measure of control over his bloodlust - almost a year had passed and his old life was dead and buried. He read his obituary in the papers and listened blankly to Henry tell him about the funeral. Too grisly fascinated to tell him to stop when his throat threatened to close up on him completely as Henry ducked his head, speaking quickly around the tearful jolt of dialogue shared by his children, his wife – Abraham.

_Such a queer thing._

So, Abraham never knew. He never knew that the day he'd died had also been the day of his rebirth. Never knew that scant miles from him, his friend still lived. Still thought of him.  _Missed him._ Dwelling on how things might have turned out different. If only.  _If only._

They had shared much over the years. Meaning, perhaps more to each other than two men in such times could ever hope to express. For while they had their wives and their children, they'd always had each other first. Blasphemy or not. Even Abraham had said as much. Their feelings for each other were the purest thing about them. And if that was a sin, then he would commit it a thousand times just for the cheek of it.

He was quite sure Henry didn't know the truth of it, what they had meant to each other. It had never been something they'd put to voice outside of each other. But he was sure the man suspected. Abraham had once told him that Henry had once said that their scents were so intertwined the vampire often had trouble telling them apart, even seconds after they'd gone. In fact, they rarely spoke of Abraham at all. Years passed. The First World War, then the second, waiting for Henry to say something. To wax about shared regrets and lost loves. But he never did. After a while, he rather thought the man respected him too much to chance an upset between them.

* * *

He felt ancient long before his time. Like the bite hadn't just stolen his death but his soul as well, his laughter and humor. Or maybe that was afterwards. When a bullet and fell thoughts took Abraham away from him - away from all of them that evening at Petersen House only a handful of years later.

The awful truth of it was he'd never regretted his decision to stay away more than when the papers on the morning of the fifteenth of April, 1865 stopped him cold.

He found himself halfway to the White House at least a dozen times in those first few days. Drawn by some innate, lingering human instinct to come together in times of upset. He'd even tried to justify it to himself. Surely Mary could do with a familiar face? Surely she might have need of him?

But he always stopped himself before he made it to the door.

That life was behind him now, more so now than it had ever been.

For with Abraham gone, the truth was he had no reason to stay.

In the end, he allowed Henry to coax him into traveling to the Orient and Latin America. Chasing down rouge covens and fleeing vampire nationals from the southern states trying to setting down new roots abroad. It was a distraction. He knew it was. But he allowed himself to be drawn into it all the same.

They both needed time.

Time to heal.

Time to forget.

Time to understand what their lives were without Abraham Lincoln alive and well. Flashing that boyish smile and finding hope, even in the darkest of places. Finding their footing in a world that was rapidly changing and an enemy that was changing almost as quickly.

It was a very long time before either of them stepped foot on American soil again.


	2. Chapter 2

_April 15_ _th_ _, 2015._

It was an unspoken tradition. Coming back together each year on the eve of Abraham's death. To commiserate and comfort one another on a shared loss that still lived and breathed in their breasts despite the years that had slid smoothly past.

The separate rhythms of their life often took them to opposite ends of the world, but on this there would always be consensus. The world could be reduced to ash and still they would make the same journey, year after arduous year.

For the world had changed.

And with it, so had he.

He had invested, more or less wisely and after a smattering of years amassed enough to get into business. He used his strengths and banked on the skills amassed while helping Abraham rule the nation and carved out a life for himself. Black Thursday and the depression in the thirties nearly bankrupted him. But he'd been smart enough to have backups. The concept of living forever was one that both depressed and frightened him. Turning him shrewd and untrusting, investing cautiously but with a keen eye for the market that brought with it, its own rewards in due time.

Henry at least, remained a comfortingly familiar creature. Dependable in his expensive taste and on-and-off-again habit of grooming allies to fight the darker forces. It was a routine that had existed long before either he or Abraham had been born and one he suspected would stay that way until God saw fit to wrend them from the earth completely.

In past years they'd met on the White House grounds for the occasion. Rediscovering familiar haunts and memories to be shared. Now, with technology and a keener awareness of the importance and inherent dangers of the position of President of the United States, they'd long decided that the risk simply wasn't worth the reward. Could they? Certainly. But the chance that their presence – whether in arriving or escaping – might harm an innocent was too great.

Instead, for the last five decades, they had taken their wake to one of his townhouses around the city. This time a penthouse suite within sight of the Lincoln memorial. It wasn't the nooks and crannies of the Oval Office roof, but he supposed it would do. It was the spirit of the thing after all.

Henry had just smirked when he'd given him the address.

Smarmy pillock that he was.

* * *

 

 

Henry arrived in the same whirl-wind he always did. Manic and ancient and painfully young despite the centuries he'd lived fully, long before his own forefather's had been born. Smelling of liquor and a particular brand of emotional misery that was not his own. The acrid taint of depression and inner conflict that anyone with senses as theirs could smell from a mile away.

"Another recruit?" he asked blandly, clapping the man on the back as they embraced in the door way. Nodding to Jerry, the building's door man, as the old codger gave him an off center salute from the elevator before limping back into it. Likely already thinking fond thoughts of his chair by the door in the lobby and spy novels he devoured page by page.

"Only time will tell," Henry chirped, in suspiciously good humor as he kicked off his boots and followed him inside. "Though I will admit to being woefully wrong on one count."

"Oh, just one?" he teased, smile honest in its merriment as the familiarity of his old friend immediately put him at ease. They had spoken on the phone only a few weeks ago. But there was nothing quite like seeing one another in the flesh.

"You would have approved. In fact, it felt very much like a soap opera," Henry commented, tossing his overcoat in the vague direction of the rack before bounding down the hall - ever curious. Letting him trail at a more sedate pace as the man did his usual rounds.

"I like this one, tell me you'll keep it?" Henry demanded, peering out of the window before flicking the lock on the roof-side door and stepping out into the open city air. Dress shirt rippling, blowing back the scent of-

"Good lord, you reek of gun oil and-" he started, pressing a hand to his nose before cutting himself off as the man rolled his neck and grinned at him.

"Now you see why I called it a proper soap opera."

He sighed, knowing his interest had been well and truly caught.

"Alright then, tell me. I doubt you'd give me a moment of peace until you do anyway," he remarked, beckoning the man inside the warm comforts of a modern, but distinctly period appropriate parlor. Fire crackling merrily in the grate, as if to welcome them hence.

* * *

"So why the gun then?" he asked, fascinated, rolling his sleeves up as he sauntered into the kitchen and pulled a couple bags of fresh blood out of the hidden compartment in the back of his crisper. Nose twitching at the sterile scent of the fridge before letting the stainless steel doors hush closed behind him.

"Ex-Marine, only a week fresh from his last tour," Henry replied, relishing the attention. "When it slipped out of his holster I thought he was going to keel clear over in shock. Told me he didn't feel safe without it. I rather don't blame him. Still, he seemed remarkably even tempered despite the taint of supernatural on him."

"So, he wasn't out to kill anyone then?" he asked again, feeling the need to clarify the matter after Henry had rambled on about jilted lovers and a squad commander that clearly wasn't what he pretended to be.

Though, personally, how they'd managed to survive in Afghanistan of all places, in that sun, without being discovered was a mystery to him.

"Not at all, save for perhaps his ego," Henry returned. "It is truly a new era, Speed. He told me right then and there that he was trying to get up his courage to confront his commander about a suspicious death that happened on tour. Apparently his lover, a true red-headed summer son of the south - you two would have probably gotten on well - went out on patrol with him halfway through their tour and only the commander returned. Only he doesn't think the commander did it. Has utter faith in the creature. Rather, he thinks that his commander was made to cover it up by someone higher up. He wants the truth. That's all. It's all very cloak and dagger. Refreshing."

"I hope you talked him out of it?" he replied, brow raised. Not putting it completely past his friend to let the entire thing play out just a measure too far for the sake of his own entertainment.

"Of course not," Henry scoffed. "A man like that couldn't be talked out of anything, including his own death. I merely wished him luck and then followed him when he'd drank enough to steady his nerve. He's in a motel four blocks away at this very moment sleeping it off. His commander threw him through a wall and had him pinned down, fangs literally poised to fall before I stepped in. He'll be alright. In time. Broke a bunch of ribs and got the daylights beaten out of him, but I think he'll shape up just fine. You might even want to meet this one, Speed, he's a quiet one."

He nodded, entertaining no such thing as he used the sharp of his nails to slice through each packet before pouring the lot into a copper sauce pan. What Henry did with his human pets was of little interest to him. He didn't see the point, in all honesty. Why make things harder for yourself in the long run. Forging acquaintances – relationships – when you knew they wouldn't last?

"You'll have to approach him carefully, you understand?" he remarked after a pause. "He's different from the others. He has already fought a battle, he knows war – what it does - how it burns you out from the inside. He's suffered from it. He might not be so forgiving if he finds out what you are the wrong way."

"He already knows," Henry replied, looking lazily pleased with himself. The same look that Mary used to threaten with the sharp slap of a ruler. Claiming that he was up to no good and she would tolerate none of his foolishness in her house that day.

_Ah, Mary._

"You broke script," he accused, surprised in spite of himself. Knowing how uniform Henry preferred to keep his recruiting affairs.

"You said it yourself, he's different," Henry shrugged, following him out to the den. "He didn't need a convenient story to believe before circumstance saw fit to unveil me. It was the one thing I regretted with Abraham. And it cost me years of his friendship. That regret is on me, and if you believe nothing else, believe that it is not a mistake I wish to repeat."

"I explained to him before I left to come here, in terms that despite his injuries, he fully understood. Not every man with a gun is a murderer. Just the same as not every man with fangs is necessarily evil."

He opened his mouth to reply, but Henry beat him to it.

"Enough of this talk, let's drink!" the man exclaimed, "I have to admit I've worked up quite an appetite this evening! I feel oddly as though our dear Abraham would have approved, all things considered."

* * *

There was a quiet sort of freneticism to his friend's movements when they settled into chairs by the fire. Enough that when Henry sighed and set aside his glass - barely touched - and reached for something inside his jacket, he already had his undivided attention.

"There is something I've been meaning to give you," Henry started, bringing out a cloth wrapped bundle and setting it carefully on his lap. "Every year we come together, I've had it on me. But I've never quite gotten to the point of taking it out of my jacket. I suppose I've been waiting for the right time, the right year. And for some reason, I think that time has come."

He took the bundle cautiously, throat hitching on a breath that was more habit than anything as the cloth fell away and his world rapidly narrowed down to the worn leather journal in his lap.

His nostrils flared.

Eyes flashing as the faint, barely-there scent of Abraham flooded the room.

_God it had been so long._

_So very long._

"I hope you will forgive me for keeping it from you," Henry replied, looking truly hesitant for the first time that evening as he watched him carefully. "I mean it when I say it never felt like the proper time."

"Where did you find it?" he breathed, suddenly besieged by a lifetime of memory. Moments in the little room above his shop, watching Abraham scribbling away at the desk. The long lean bow of his back highlighted in all its glory as the sweat of high summer sluiced down the knobs of his spine. Abraham in the train car, just before the end, cursing as the nib of his pen splattered ink blots across the half-dried page.

"He entrusted it to me the night he died. He'd finished it, finished it while I watched, as Mary paced down the steps and stood waiting by the carriage. The true account of his life, as he told it," Henry shared, expelling a long pent up breath as dark eyes watched his behind hooded lashes. "For a long time, the irony was too much to bear."

His fingers trembled around the cover. Fangs dropped behind the veil of his lips like violence unchained. Almost overcome as the years rolled back and the hard press of the man's skin glided across his own – old ghosts hovering. Breathing in the truest scent of him as words neither of them wished to take back come morning were uttered unabashedly into the night.

"And you've read it?"

"A thousand times over," Henry admitted, leaning forward in increments until he was kneeling in front of him, grasping his hand in his own before lowing it slowly onto the cover. Soaking in the chill of the man's skin as through him his deadened fingers clutched at what was perhaps the only spark of warmth left in the world.

"He loved you very much, my friend."

* * *

"I asked him once, you know," Henry murmured later, nursing a glass of fire warmed red – AB+ from a lovely and very discrete donor he'd become particularly fond of over the past year. Watching offhandedly as the lights of the capitol flickered and gleamed. Jewel-like but still slightly tainted, like the air had never quite recovered from the black dust of the old coal-steamers before other forms of pollution ushered in at the wings.

"I know you think it selfish, but I still wish he'd let me turn him."

He remained silent, thumb caressing the scuffed leather of the journal. Taking comfort in the weight of it in his lap as the lingering traces of the man's scent soaked into his clothes – leeching into his skin so that once again, however faintly, they finally smelled alike again.

"I miss him," Henry stated, frowning like the truth of it surprised him. "More every day."

"As do I," he returned, gratified when the words came out more or less level. "But you know as well as I that he wouldn't have wanted it. Even if it was only to be here, with us. There were some things he simply couldn't bear the thought of. And one of them was  _us_. To become what you hate? I doubt there is a worse fate, Henry. You know that as well as I."

Henry just sighed, swallowing what was left in his glass before leaning forward to pour himself another generous measure. Savoring the flavor appreciatively. Stretching in place as the plush armchair groaned in warning.

"We could have done a lot together, us three. Can't blame me for speaking it aloud."

His lip quirked. Seeing Abraham in his mind's eye the day he'd sat him down and told him everything after Adam and his cohorts had kidnapped William. Vampires. The supernatural. His mission. Earnest but completely prepared for him to cast him aside completely or even call the authorities, believing him mad. The man had kissed him soundly, wrecked and joyous all in turn when he'd simply clapped him on the shoulder and asked where they should start.

_God, he'd loved that man._

"Some men don't need to live forever to make the difference they were created for," he replied quietly. Feeling the truth of it mingle with the blood freely given – flowing easily off his palate as a thousand different flavors melded together. Giving a picture of a life – a person – before it was gone again. Begging to be rediscovered in the next sip, then the next.

"And what about us then?" Henry quipped, fangs glinting. Eyes dark, not threatening, but not shying away from the challenge either. Lending just enough violence to the moment to call it tense as the clock in the hall tick-ticked its way through the seconds – minutes – before-

"Oh, my dear friend," he answered, shaking his head sadly as Henry blinked slow. Chuckling low and rueful in the depths of his throat, flirting with the butt of the joke before letting it fall – free and damning as the very minute they said Booth's finger tightened around the trigger passed by unmarked but not unmourned. "It has been a long time since we were simply men."

They sat together in silence, fire crackling slow and soothing, for a long time after that.


End file.
